“God is both further from us, and nearer to us, than anything else.”

“Such, then, is our God: unknowable in his essence, yet known in his energies; beyond and above all that we can think or express, yet closer to us than our own heart.”

“We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery.”

Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

1. Don’t.

2. Reschedule the conflicting event.

3. If all avenues of rescheduling have been explored (and exploration proves unsuccessful), an SMC should email Karin, Mike and their RHMC to make Karin/Mike/RHMC aware of the impending absence.

Small gifts and words of praise ease our pain in coping with your nonattendance. Just kidding. Except not.

 

From Dr. Richard Beck, an experimental psychologist at Abilene Christian University in Texas, who is finishing up a series of posts on disgust psychology and hospitality:

As the Church Fathers asserted, a self-contained God without need is sterile. For God to be love there had to be a Son, a needy, receiving component within the Godhead. God the Father empties himself into the Son and the Son gives that glory back to the Father. The love, nature and life of God is revealed in this dynamic cycle of emptying and receiving between Father and Son.

And so it is for Christians seeking to step into the life and love of God. Love cannot be from our excess. Love is not giving away the leftovers after we have taken care of our material needs and secured our creature comforts. Recall the observation of Jesus as he watched the people making their temple offerings. Jesus praises the widow who gave two mites because it was all she had. The wealthy, however, gave from their excess. The contrast, for Jesus, concerns self-giving to the point of neediness. The widow, giving all she had, moves into a state of need with her gift. The wealthy give a greater sum but remain self-sustaining and self-determined. They don’t give to the point where, we might say, it hurts. McGill’s powerful analysis on this point is worth quoting at length:

The love which is proclaimed in many churches that worship the [American] dream carefully disregards the outcome of love. These churches speak of love as helping others, but they ignore what helping others does to the person who loves. They ignore the fact that love is self-expenditure, a real expending, a real losing, a real deterioration of the self. They speak as if love the person who is loving had not problems, had no needs…They say to people: “Since you have not unanswered needs, why don’t you go and help the other people who are in need?” But they never go on to add “If you do this, you too will be driven into need.” By not stating the outcome of love they give the childish impression that Christian love is some kind of cornucopia where we can meet everyone’s needs and problems and still have everything we need for ourselves! And believe me, there are grown-up people who speak this kind of nonsense…[all this is the] illusion that some people can give without receiving, can nourish others without thereby becoming impoverished themselves—in short the illusion of perpetual affluence…the dreadfulness of this illusion lies in the fact that it is so inauthentic; it is so phony…If ever you approach a needy person with the illusion that you are a creature of purely bestowing love, then to that needy person you will seem totally alien, totally superior…Active love occurs within the fellowship of neediness, within the neediness of the one who serves and leads, and the one who serves in neediness…Too often we hear the lie that to love is to help others without this help having any effect upon ourselves.

This is the deep reason blindness to our own need undermines a life of mercy. The issue does begin with empathy, seeing my need reflected in the lives of others. But it doesn’t stop there. Mercy is costly. True lovemoves me into need. Which is, admittedly, a scary prospect. It is an act of faith and it requires a community, a “fellowship of neediness” to use McGill’s phrase. And it is within the giving and receiving of this “fellowship of neediness” where the life and love of God is fully expressed and experienced. In this, the life of the Trinity creates the life of the church or, rather, the life of the church participates in the life of God.

Worth thinking about in the midst of your Sabbath week, no?

Hey again friends,

Many of you, now that you know how much money you have to spend, are beginning to spend it.  That’s great.  Now you need to remember how to get reimbursed.  Here’s the info:

1.  Send me an email with the following information: your ID number, your phone number, what you purchased, where and when you purchased it, who was there (if it’s more than 10 people, just tell many how many there were), and why (be detailed and specific!).

2.  I will fill out a reimbursement form for you (lately I’ve been doing these every Friday, but that could change if more of them start to come in) and put it in the reimbursement box in the upper SUB.  It’s right by Deb’s office and there’s a big sign over it that says “SMC REIMBURSEMENTS!!!”.  Take it out of the first folder, staple your receipt, sign your name, and put it in the second folder.

3.  I will put the form in Sean Lomas’ box (the VP of Finance), and after processing, a check will be issued to you which you can pick up in 3rd Weter.  If you want to save some time and paper, you can also sign up to be reimbursed directly to your bank account on Banner.

Make sense?  If you have any questions, you can leave a comment or ask one of us in person.

Happy spending.

Friends,

Here is everything you need to know about your budget this year.

1.  Each RHMC and SMC has $50.00 in discretionary funds for the year.  You can use this on your floor, for one-on-ones, for decorating your prayer lounge, or whatever.  Remember that to get reimbursed you have to keep your receipt.

2.  Each staff gets $50.00 for the year to put on a quarterly all-hall event.  Note that, considering you have to put on one each quarter, that this doesn’t amount to much.  You can dip into your own discretionary funds if you want to use that money on your all-hall events, but this is the amount we have specifically set aside for your that purpose.  Be creative: our best events last year in Hill cost the least amount of money.

3.  You each get $10.00 per retreat (at two retreats per year, that’s $20.00 each total).  It’s best to think of this collectively: for example, since Hill/Mo has 15 staff members (including RHMCs), they have $150.00 to spend per retreat, or $300.00 total.  You can spend no money in the fall and blow it all in the spring, I really don’t care.  Just keep your receipts and stay at the limit and you’ll get paid.

4.  I’ll tell you a little secret: there’s more money tucked away in the budget for extraneous things.  It’s not too much, but it’s there for you to use.  If you’d like to take someone on your floor out to coffee, or buy some flowers for someone’s birthday, but you’ve already spent your $50, shoot me a quick e-mail with what you’re thinking and I’ll give you the green light.  RHMCs, this applies to you especially: again, talk to me FIRST and I’ll let you know if it works.  If all of you decide to go nuts, between 45 of you that money will run out by November, but it’s there if you ask politely.  Capice?

That’s all folks.  This money is there for you, but please spend it wisely so I don’t have to explain to the VP of Finance why you needed to spend $150.00 on a basketball hoop for your floor or an XBox 360 or something stupid like that.  Or better, so I don’t have to tell you why I can’t reimburse you for the basketball hoop even though you already dropped $150 on it.  Your spending must be relevant to your work in ministry on the floor or with your staff.

It occurs to me that sometimes I get a little carried away with things.  For this, I apologize.

Heads up: if you haven’t looked at the blog in a few days, we’re looking at Chapter 1 of Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer.  If you haven’t picked up The Wounded Healer in a few, uh, months, then you should probably pick that up and get going!  To get you caught up on our discussion: Part 1, which summarizes the first chapter and lays out what the next few posts will be looking like, is here.  Part 2, a look at the TV shows, books, and movies that have influenced and continue to define our generation, is here.  What we’ll end up with, hopefully, is some idea of how the questions (and answers!) Nouwen produces in his first chapter might apply to a new generation (our generation), thirty years later.  And another reminder: if this sounds an awful lot like a waste of time, then put the computer down and go play outside!  I really don’t mind.  I’m just finding this to be an interesting project, and although I intend to blog through the whole book, I think only one post on each of the remaining chapters will probably do the trick.  This one’s just taking me a bit longer.

If you’ll recall, we’re trying to figure out some answers to three questions.  This post will be on the second question: What historical events, new technologies, and philosophical ideas have shaped our collective worldviews?  If you remember, Nouwen looked at the generation emerging in the 70’s and dubbed them “nuclear man”, because of the profound effect the creation of the nuclear bomb had on its collective psyche.  Can you imagine living in a world where bomb shelters and food stockpiles were a part of life?  Nouwen examined a generation shaped by the Cold War, by Nixon, by Vietnam.  Our task here is to examine how our generation has been shaped by, in particular, new technologies and historical events.

To keep things brief (ha), I’ll list and discuss only three.  Ready?

Here we go.